Kruegler receives NASA FINESST Fellowship

Third-year physics graduate student Nick Kruegler has been selected to receive the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) fellowship. This award will support his research, conducted with Assistant Professor Ali Sulaiman, into the open questions surrounding the generation of the aurora on Jupiter. He will use data from the Juno spacecraft to better understand the processes driving the Jovian auroras, which are the most powerful auroral emissions of any planet in the Solar System. 

As on Earth, Jupiter's auroras are predominantly generated by energetic electrons streaming into the atmosphere, leading to the emission of light. However, the Jovian auroras possess stark differences from auroras on Earth, specifically in the mechanisms that accelerate electrons to their high energies. Interactions between plasma waves and charged particles are understood to be the main driver of electron precipitation into Jupiter's atmosphere. Kruegler seeks to constrain these wave-particle interactions by studying the spatial variation of important plasma properties above the auroras.

FINESST awards are research grants for up to three years and up to $50K per year. Read more about the FINESST Award on their website.